Pirandello and Film

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by Nina da Vinci Nichols and Jana O'Keefe Bazzoni

Type: Studies
Subject: Others persons > Luigi Pirandello
Keywords: Luigi Pirandello, screenwriter
Publishing date: 1995
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 248 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ¼ inches (16 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN-10 ISBN-13

0-8032-3336-1
978-0-8032-3336-2

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Book Presentation:
Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) is one of the preeminent figures of the modern European theater. His masterpiece, Six Characters in Search of an Author, set loose a riot during its first performance in Rome in 1921. This play about six unfortunate characters abandoned by their author in the middle of a tawdry drama, is an unsettling, supremely self-conscious work that is ultimately about theatrical artifice and artistic creation itself.

Pirandello and Film examines Pirandello’s many efforts—none of them finally successful—to transform Six Characters into a movie. The authors examine Pirandello’s views on film and its relation to theater, his varying approaches to creating a film adaptation of Six Characters, and the efforts of directors and film moguls in Germany and Hollywood to fashion a cinematic version of the play.

The book also presents an array of important documents, including some that have never before appeared in English: a Prologue (or prose sketch) for a 1926 film; a Scenario (a more detailed prose sketch) prepared by Pirandello and Adolph Lantz in the late 1920s for a German film version of Six Characters; an English-language film sketch written in 1935 by Pirandello and Saul Colin; and a letter from Max Reinhardt and the German emigré Hollywood film director Joseph von Sternberg to Saul Colin regarding the proposed film treatment of the play. These documents, together with the authors’ critical text, provide a detailed portrait of Pirandello’s developing view of film as an appropriate medium for his revolutionary dramatic innovations.

About the authors:
Nina daVinci Nichols, a professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author of Ariadne’s Lives, Man, Myth & Monument, and two novels: Moira’s Room and Child of the Night. Jana O’Keefe Bazzoni, an associate professor of speech at Baruch College, has published articles in The Luigi Pirandello Companion, Performing Arts Journal, and Modern Drama. Maurice Charney, a professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author of All of Shakespeare, Comedy High and Low, and Sexual Fiction.

See the publisher website: University of Nebraska Press

See the complete filmography of Luigi Pirandello on the website: IMDB ...

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